Solidarity Center Education Fund
Promoting worker rights worldwide
Programs and results
What we aim to solve
The Solidarity Center is the largest U.S.-based grassroots international worker rights organization helping workers attain safe and healthy workplaces, family-supporting wages, dignity on the job and greater equity at work and in their community. Allied with the AFL-CIO, the Solidarity Center assists workers across the globe as, together, they fight discrimination, exploitation and the systems that entrench poverty—to achieve shared prosperity in the global economy.
Our programs
What are the organization's current programs, how do they measure success, and who do the programs serve?
Empowering men and women around the world to exercise their fundamental labor rights
OUR APPROACH
The Solidarity Center empowers men and women around the world to earn safe and dignified livelihoods, exercise their fundamental labor rights and have a voice in shaping work conditions and public policies that impact their lives. Workers accomplish this by organizing and joining unions, through which they are able to negotiate collective improvements as well as build and balance power at the workplace and within the global economy.
Our professional staff of more than 200 work in more than 60 countries with 400-plus labor unions and allied organizations to support workers—in garment factories, home service, seafood processing, mining, agriculture, informal marketplaces, manufacturing, the public sector and beyond—as they exercise their rights, including organizing for safer work sites, demanding living wages and improving laws (and the enforcement of existing laws) that protect working people, and fighting exploitation and abuse.
Solidarity Center Program Goals
The Solidarity Center very deliberately designs and implements programs that do one or more of the following:
- Confront the gender discrimination that suppresses women’s voice at work and racism in all its forms—for both are deliberate tools to disenfranchise people
- Provide workers–especially the most marginalized, such as domestic workers, street vendors, agriculture and migrant workers–with the information they need to understand their rights, raise the voices of the grassroots, and lead their own organizations to improve their jobs
- Build global solidarity that connects people across borders, sharing strategies and providing peer support
- Advance legal strategies to strengthen labor laws and human rights laws at the country, regional and global levels
- Pursue alliances that help build enduring democratic societies,broadly collaborating with allies in the larger social justice movement to become stronger together
Hands-on Training and Individualized Support
The Solidarity Center works one-on-one with workers, and crafts programs to support the specific needs of unions, associations and workers. For instance, we
- Provide training and technical expertise that can help workers take on societal ills such as child labor, human trafficking, unfair labor laws, infringement of women’s rights, dangerous workplaces and the exploitation of the vulnerable
- Assist unions trying to strengthen internal structures, including achievement of gender parity
- Work with women as they challenge the systems and organizations that deny them voice
- Conduct health and safety trainings for factory and other workers, and support networks of workers injured on the job
- Implement legal assistance programs, including training paralegals, to help workers recover stolen wages or benefits illegally denied them
- Connect migrant workers to protective networks, decreasing their vulnerability
- Link workers and their unions with others sharing similar struggles and experiences
- Boost advocacy efforts so that campaigns resonate beyond borders
- Stand in solidarity with social-change activists around the world as we strive to build a global network of worker rights defenders
Where we work
External reviews
Our Sustainable Development Goals
Learn more about Sustainable Development Goals.
Goals & Strategy
Reports and documents
Download strategic planLearn about the organization's key goals, strategies, capabilities, and progress.
Charting impact
Four powerful questions that require reflection about what really matters - results.
What is the organization aiming to accomplish?
The Solidarity Center acts on the fundamental principle that working people can, by exercising their right to freedom of association and forming trade unions and democratic worker rights organizations, collectively improve their jobs and workplaces, call on their governments to uphold laws and protect human rights, and be a force for democracy, social justice and inclusive economic development.
What are the organization's key strategies for making this happen?
Built into the fabric of our societies are entrenched cultural norms and political, social and economic power structures that both drive and reflect forms of oppression of one group of people to the benefit of another. This oppression takes on many forms and often targets people by gender identity and norms, class, race, ethnicity, age, sexual orientation, religion or disability, or other group identities. Working people belong to more than one of these groups, and therefore carry the burden of multiple systems of oppression.
Using intersectionality as a framework that recognizes the various ways workers’ identities are targeted to deny their rights, we will strive to dismantle the overlapping systems of discrimination that trap and exploit workers and degrade and encumber labor and other progressive social movements.
We believe that to build truly sustainable social justice, workers must lead their own struggles through grassroots democratic unions and worker-controlled organizations. We support unions led by workers, not on behalf of workers.These are organizations where all workers have a voice and exercise their agency, acting on their own behalf for just wages, work with dignity and a better future for themselves and their families. We support freedom of association as a foundation of democracy, and collective bargaining as a primary means of building the political and economic power of workers.
We will ensure the centrality of worker self-organizing and worker leadership in all our programs. Implementation of this shift will require a re-examination of our partnerships for alignment with our vision and values. We will privilege partnerships with democratic unions and organizations led and controlled by workers, and will encourage movement in this direction.
We believe that a global, worker-led movement is necessary to achieve real power for workers, especially given the international assault on workers’ human rights and organizations. We will work with the AFL-CIO and our partners to build an equitable, global grassroots movement for work with dignity and respect for workers’ human rights. We will create opportunities for substantive, cross-border exchanges to generate solidarity, joint action, shared analysis and power building. We will become a global catalyst and facilitator to educate and connect workers from the U.S. labor movement, in all its forms, with workers in other countries. In response to the reactionary and authoritarian currents present in today’s politics and culture, and to the unchecked influence of corporate money in our democracies, we will push assertively to not only maintain but also increase the space for inclusive, democratic civil-society participation in all aspects of public life. This necessarily includes building, joining and actively participating in coalitions that bridge labor movements, other social movements, grassroots and civil-society organizations, and communities in common struggles.
What are the organization's capabilities for doing this?
Founded in 1997 and allied with the U.S. labor movement, the Solidarity Center works with unions, worker associations and community groups to provide a wide range of education, training, research, legal support and other resources to help build strong and effective trade unions and more just and equitable societies. Its programs—in more than 60 countries—focus on human and worker rights awareness, union skills, occupational safety and health, economic literacy, human trafficking, women’s empowerment and bolstering workers in an increasingly informal economy.
Solidarity Center programs support and contribute to the global movement for labor rights. he Solidarity Center has nearly 30 field offices and works in more than 60 countries, with a focus on the Global South. With more than 20 years of experience as the largest US-based grassroots worker rights organization worldwide, we have built a deep trust and reputation with local trade union partners, worker associations and workers worldwide. As a result, we are uniquely positioned to quickly identify trends that impact working people and opportunities for change through campaigns and cross-movement building.
We are proud to work with more than 1,000 partners including 500 trade union partners. Eighty-three percent of our partnerships exist at the local grassroots level reaching more than 70 million workers worldwide. Solidarity Center staff include labor activists experienced in organizing, advocacy and grassroots internationalism, recognized labor rights lawyers, and migration policy and gender specialists. The Solidarity Center has also built strong relationships with civil society partners including worker centers and community organizations at the intersection of worker rights, environmental activism and the feminist movement.
What have they accomplished so far and what's next?
How we listen
Seeking feedback from people served makes programs more responsive and effective. Here’s how this organization is listening.
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How is your organization using feedback from the people you serve?
To identify and remedy poor client service experiences, To identify bright spots and enhance positive service experiences, To make fundamental changes to our programs and/or operations, To inform the development of new programs/projects, To identify where we are less inclusive or equitable across demographic groups, To strengthen relationships with the people we serve, To understand people's needs and how we can help them achieve their goals
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Which of the following feedback practices does your organization routinely carry out?
We collect feedback from the people we serve at least annually, We take steps to get feedback from marginalized or under-represented people, We aim to collect feedback from as many people we serve as possible, We take steps to ensure people feel comfortable being honest with us, We look for patterns in feedback based on demographics (e.g., race, age, gender, etc.), We look for patterns in feedback based on people’s interactions with us (e.g., site, frequency of service, etc.), We engage the people who provide feedback in looking for ways we can improve in response, We act on the feedback we receive, We tell the people who gave us feedback how we acted on their feedback, We ask the people who gave us feedback how well they think we responded
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What challenges does the organization face when collecting feedback?
It is difficult to find the ongoing funding to support feedback collection, Staff find it hard to prioritize feedback collection and review due to lack of time
Financials
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Operations
The people, governance practices, and partners that make the organization tick.
Connect with nonprofit leaders
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- Analyze a variety of pre-calculated financial metrics
- Access beautifully interactive analysis and comparison tools
- Compare nonprofit financials to similar organizations
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Connect with nonprofit leaders
SubscribeBuild relationships with key people who manage and lead nonprofit organizations with GuideStar Pro. Try a low commitment monthly plan today.
- Analyze a variety of pre-calculated financial metrics
- Access beautifully interactive analysis and comparison tools
- Compare nonprofit financials to similar organizations
Want to see how you can enhance your nonprofit research and unlock more insights? Learn More about GuideStar Pro.
Solidarity Center Education Fund
Board of directorsas of 11/29/2023
Elizabeth Shuler
AFL-CIO
Fred Redmond
AFL-CIO
Gabrielle Carteris
FIA
Ray Curry
USW
Evelyn DeJesus
AFT AFL-CIO
Robert Martinez Jr
IAM
Terrence Melvin
CBTU
Doug Moore
UDW/AFSCME
Art Pulaski
CLF AFL-CIO
Alvina Yeh
APALA
Board leadership practices
GuideStar worked with BoardSource, the national leader in nonprofit board leadership and governance, to create this section.
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Board orientation and education
Does the board conduct a formal orientation for new board members and require all board members to sign a written agreement regarding their roles, responsibilities, and expectations? Yes -
CEO oversight
Has the board conducted a formal, written assessment of the chief executive within the past year ? Not applicable -
Ethics and transparency
Have the board and senior staff reviewed the conflict-of-interest policy and completed and signed disclosure statements in the past year? Not applicable -
Board composition
Does the board ensure an inclusive board member recruitment process that results in diversity of thought and leadership? Yes -
Board performance
Has the board conducted a formal, written self-assessment of its performance within the past three years? Not applicable
Organizational demographics
Who works and leads organizations that serve our diverse communities? Candid partnered with CHANGE Philanthropy on this demographic section.
Leadership
The organization's leader identifies as:
Race & ethnicity
Gender identity
Transgender Identity
Sexual orientation
No data
Disability
No data
Equity strategies
Last updated: 12/02/2022GuideStar partnered with Equity in the Center - an organization that works to shift mindsets, practices, and systems to increase racial equity - to create this section. Learn more
- We review compensation data across the organization (and by staff levels) to identify disparities by race.
- We ask team members to identify racial disparities in their programs and / or portfolios.
- We analyze disaggregated data and root causes of race disparities that impact the organization's programs, portfolios, and the populations served.
- We disaggregate data to adjust programming goals to keep pace with changing needs of the communities we support.
- We employ non-traditional ways of gathering feedback on programs and trainings, which may include interviews, roundtables, and external reviews with/by community stakeholders.
- We disaggregate data by demographics, including race, in every policy and program measured.
- We have long-term strategic plans and measurable goals for creating a culture such that one’s race identity has no influence on how they fare within the organization.
- We use a vetting process to identify vendors and partners that share our commitment to race equity.
- We have a promotion process that anticipates and mitigates implicit and explicit biases about people of color serving in leadership positions.
- We seek individuals from various race backgrounds for board and executive director/CEO positions within our organization.
- We have community representation at the board level, either on the board itself or through a community advisory board.
- We help senior leadership understand how to be inclusive leaders with learning approaches that emphasize reflection, iteration, and adaptability.
- We measure and then disaggregate job satisfaction and retention data by race, function, level, and/or team.
- We engage everyone, from the board to staff levels of the organization, in race equity work and ensure that individuals understand their roles in creating culture such that one’s race identity has no influence on how they fare within the organization.